drumming on her elbows--her favourite position--and suddenly gave him a slap on his rosy cheek with her large powerful hand! He jumped and merely gaped; it must be said he was head over ears in love with her.... He asked: ‘What’s that for?’ She laughed scornfully and walked off. ‘I was there in the room,’ Anna related, ‘I saw it all, I ran after her and said to her, “Katia, why did you do that, really?” And she answered me: “If he’d been a real man he would have punished me, but he’s no more pluck than a drowned hen! And then he asks, ‘What’s that for?’ If he loves me, and doesn’t bear malice, he had better put up with it and not ask, ‘What’s that for?’ I will never be anything to him--never, never!” And indeed she did not marry him. It was soon after that she made the acquaintance of that actress, and left her home. Mother cried, but father only said, “A stubborn beast is best away from the flock!” And he did not bother about her, or try to find her out. My father did not understand Katia. On the day before her flight,’ added Anna, ‘she almost smothered me in her embraces, and kept repeating: “I can’t, I can’t help it!... My heart’s torn, but I can’t help it! your cage is too small ... it cramps my wings! And there’s no escaping one’s fate....” ‘After that,’ observed Anna, ‘we saw each other very seldom.... When my father died, she came for a couple of days, would take nothing of her inheritance, and vanished again. She was unhappy with us ... I could see that. Afterwards she came to Kazan as an actress.’ Aratov began questioning Anna about the theatre, about the parts in which Clara had appeared, about her triumphs.... Anna answered in detail, but with the same mournful, though keen fervour. She even showed Aratov a photograph, in which Clara had been taken in the costume of one of her parts. In the photograph she was looking away, as though turning from the spectators; her thick hair tied with a ribbon fell in a coil on her bare arm. Aratov looked a long time at the photograph, thought it like, asked whether Clara had taken part in public recitations, and learnt that she had not; that she had needed the excitement of the theatre, the scenery ... but another question was burning on his lips. ‘Anna Semyonovna!’ he cried at last, not loudly, but with a peculiar force, ‘tell me, I implore you, tell me why did she ... what led her to this fearful step?’... Anna looked down. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, after a pause of some instants. ‘By God, I don’t know!’ she went on strenuously, supposing from Aratov’s gesture that he did not believe her.... ‘since she came back here certainly she was melancholy, depressed. Something must have happened to her in Moscow--what, I could never guess. But on the other hand, on that fatal day she seemed as it were ... if not more cheerful, at least more serene than usual. Even I had no presentiment,’ added Anna with a bitter smile, as though reproaching herself for it.